


Byzantium’s a Long Ways Away

by kashinoha



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: A bit sad, Historical Shenanigans, Humor, Jack abuses emojis, Will picks up a bit of snark, implied Will/Jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-25 00:20:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4939504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kashinoha/pseuds/kashinoha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Jack wants Jack gets. That includes immortality, even if it takes him a while to get it. Will, understandably, is not too happy about this. Except when he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Byzantium’s a Long Ways Away

**Byzantium's a Long Ways Away  
**

All characters © Disney

 

 

The first time Will sees Jack again he happens to be at port in New Jersey, it’s 1776, and America is drunk off their patriotic arses celebrating. Jack is using an accent that Will assumes is supposed to be American and he has on a moth-eaten frock coat that looks at least a decade out of style. Will watches him nick a couple purses and an apple before deciding to follow him to a street corner, half not believing his eyes but wanting to, more than anything.

“Big fan of independence, me,” Jack says suddenly. He seems for all intents and purposes to be talking to the apple, but Will knows better by now. “You’ve got to stop sucking mummy’s teat sooner or later. Am I right, William?”

“By god, it really is you,” Will marvels. Jack’s facing him now and Will can see his dreadlocks are significantly less beaded and are tied back in a tail. Other than that he looks exactly the same as Will remembers. They both do.

“Well no, actually.”

Will frowns. “No?”

“Not by god. By some—” Jack waves his hand—”witch lady, South America, blood ritual, it’s a long story. But you’re missing the big question, Will.”

“Am I?”

Jack walks a step closer in that unmistakable gait of his. “Indeed. The big question, the _astronomical_ question here that determines the fate of the evening and all henceforth evenings is, are you buying or am I?” He’s holding out his hand and there is moonlight dancing in his eyes.

Smiling, Will grasps it.

 

 

Jack regales Will with his immoral immortal exploits, the most recent of which involved his arrest in Philadelphia after adding a rather colorful sub-clause to the Declaration of Independence (though from the sound of it old Ben had appeared more amused than angry). He is talking more than usual. Will thinks he must be happy.

“I assume that what _I’ve_ been up to holds no interest for you, since you have yet to ask,” he tells Jack coyly, propping his chin in one hand.

Jack snorts. “I ain’t dancing with Jack Ketch anytime soon, mate.1 We’ve got all the time in the world.”

“With a clause,” Will reminds him. Sliding two fingers under his collar, he pulls the cloth down to reveal the tip of a nasty-looking scar. It has healed remarkably well, but the harshness with which it was made is unmistakable.

Jack, unfazed, takes a swig of ale and says, “What’s a decade, then?” The froth catches on his mustache. His affects lay strewn on the table before them, though the hat is different and this time around the pistol has a full load. The compass is absent. It is not until the moon is high and small in the sky that Will remarks on it.

“Didn’t need it anymore. I got what I wanted,” Jack says, shrugging. “Thing was a piece of rubbish anyway.”

 

 

Once every ten years they meet up, without fail. Jack is always waiting, and Will always knows how to find him. Whether it is Father O’Malley O’Reilly off the coast of Ireland, General Crow of the Fifth Louisiana Regiment, or the elusive Gypsy Cozener of the Red Sea, Jack leaves a name wherever he goes. It is not difficult.

History’s flower unfolds its unusual and deadly petals around them. As usual, Will takes things too seriously and Jack does not take anything seriously at all. He wonders if that will change one day, with time.

“Hang around me enough, and that is all but guaranteed,” declares Jack. He licks a finger and holds it up, even though there is no wind about. “Wait and see.”

 

 

The Civil War happens and Will stops by port on his trip northbound to meet Jack…and company.

“I haven’t learnt me lesson, it seems,” says Jack as he pushes a few more slaves into the already oversized crowd boarding the Dutchman. He presses a finger to his lips and winks. “Shame.”

“You always were a stubborn git,” Will agrees.

 

 

People fall in love with death, machines, and poetry, and with every passing year pirates drop from the seas like leaves from an autumn tree.

Strangely enough Will comes to enjoy Jack’s company, as some part of him always knew he would. They grace the dimmest pubs in town and argue over who pays the drinks this time. Insults are usually exchanged. Will spends the night. It does not seem so wrong now, to take simple comforts. Jack runs weather-beaten fingers down the scar on Will’s chest and Will kisses the soft, raised flesh on Jack’s wrist that outlines the letter P.

“Have you ever thought about the difference between freedom and boredom, Jack?” Will asks, on one of these nights.

Jack rolls onto his back. His hair is no longer done in dreadlocks, and it splays thick and almost as wavy as Will’s own over his shoulders. Still dirty, though. “William, William, William,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “Why would I want to confuse myself like that?”

Will shakes his head. “There are stories of a killer in London. Jack the Ripper.”

“Well I commend him for a great title,” Jack says, “but honestly, there are cleaner ways of getting the job done. An’ coming from me, that’s saying something.”

“I worry he was bored,” says Will. He twists a new golden stud in his ear and turns toward Jack, eyes dark in the candlelight. “Tell me you wouldn’t do something like that, if things get slow.”

Jack props himself up on one elbow. “Slow? I do hope you’re joking. Since when are things ever slow with me?”

Will supposes he has a point. “You’ll always be the same as ever, I imagine,” he says. They can change their hair, their piercings, but under it all they are still the people they have always been.

“And as usual, you worry too much,” Jack says, rolling his eyes and leaning in for a kiss.

 

 

Will wonders what the blazes Jack is doing in America during Prohibition—a certain purgatory for him, when he could happily be anywhere else—but when he sees the sheer amount of bootlegging going on it is easy to see why. It’s madness, it’s illegal, and it’s so _Jack_ that it takes Will less than an hour to find him.

And naturally, Jack owns the speakeasy with the most tongue-twisting password known to man and it takes three tries and one gunshot wound before Will even makes it through the door.

“Oh Captain, my Captain,” Jack exclaims happily. His hair is cropped short, negligently combed back with Brylcreem, and his suit is a ridiculous camel-white. He has forgone the kohl around his eyes in favor of a cigarette between his teeth, and it makes him look older, somehow.

“Care for some moonshine? I’ll give you a five-finger discount, since I’m nice like that.”

“I’ll pass,” Will says, terse. It happens to be his and Elizabeth’s anniversary today, and he’s really not in the mood.

“We’ve also got Lucky Strikes, if you’re into that now. It’s not like they can kill us, you an’ me,” Jack offers, holding out his smoke.

Will glares. _“No.”_

Jack stubs out his cigarette and walks over to him, squinting. “Now that’s no way to treat an old friend,” he says. “What’s eating you?”

“Nothing is _eating me,”_ replies Will, folding his arms over his chest. “Everything’s just dandy.” He knows sarcasm does not work on Jack (he can practically hear it whizzing over Jack’s head) but he is tired, put-out, and a little bit horny.

Nodding sagely, Jack says, “Well I should know since I’ve actually _been_ eaten before, and it certainly doesn’t look like that. But you’ve got that—“he waves a hand, searching for the words—“sad, puppy-face on. I don’t like it.” Abruptly, he beams and snaps his fingers. “Ah, I know what it is!”

“I doubt it,” says Will.

Jack strokes his stubble knowingly. “You really need to get laid, mate.”

“What? No, I don’t,” Will splutters. He pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut, sighing. “I really don’t.”

Jack leers at him, grinning. “You really do.”

“And whose fault is that, Jack?” Will finally bites out because yeah, Jack’s hit a sore spot. He always does.

 _“Sshh!”_ Jack makes a zipping sound with his lips and quickly looks around. “Not here. I’m not Jack here.”

“Oh?” Will raises his eyebrows. “Who do you go by now?”

“Uh,” Jack clears his throat and brings a cupped hand to his mouth. “The Hawk.”

Will looks at him pointedly. “The Hawk?”

“It’s a tad more formidable than Sparrow, I admit, but you try bloody explaining the tattoo,” rambles Jack. “People think I don’t have my birds right, which is _extremely_ insulting because I happen to know quite a bit about the avian species—“

And suddenly Will is laughing. No, more like howling. Jack is one of the few people who sound normal when he is laughing; by contrast Will, the normal one, sounds like a loon. But it’s been a good long while since he’s laughed, truly laughed, and just like that he forgets he is supposed to be angry and brooding.

“Are you quite finished, William?” asks Jack, looking annoyed. Or as annoyed as he generally gets, which is more akin to “disgruntled kitten” than anything. Albeit one who can hit a moving target from twenty paces, but disgruntled kitten nonetheless.

“I like to think I’m entitled to poke fun every now and then,” Will gasps, recovering himself. “Whatever happened to Captain Jack Sparrow of the Black Pearl, Ninth Pirate Lord of the Brethren Court? _The Hawk,_ really.” Will sighs and wipes an eye. “Well, I suppose this makes up for your bodyguard shooting me outside.”

Jack frowns. “I don’t have a bodyguard.”

Which is how they find themselves running from a gang of mobsters with Thompsons down an alleyway, bottles a-crashing and shots whizzing every which way. The gangsters seem to be more out for money than for blood, if their ruckus is anything to go by. Will almost feels bad for them.

“Just like old times, innit?” Jack cackles.

“I really hate you sometimes,” Will shouts back. But in the dark, as they run, he is grinning.

 

 

The years go on. Sometimes they seems like minutes, other times like centuries. Jack and Will share a pint over both World Wars under smoke-ridden skies. Will has the Dutchman sinking German U-boats. Jack goes to Japan and comes back more shaken than Will has ever seen him.

“Did people just get nastier, or were we always this nasty?” he asks Will. There are black smudges under his eyes, and it’s not kohl. They are somewhere in Polynesia where the waves crash gently onto the shore and for a moment they can kid themselves that time does not exist.

Will lies back on the sand and shrugs. “We were always scallywags,” he says, looking at the stars. “We’ve just invented new ways to kill each other, that’s all.” He has been busy with submarines and torpedoes and various navies, escorting people to the Locker by the dozens.

“Do you fear life?” he asks them. Over time he has grown to enjoy it, if he’s to be honest, but this had been no fun at all.

Jack looks over and understands. “How’s your dad?” he asks, changing the subject.

“Alright, I guess.” Jack the Monkey notwithstanding, the only one still around from the Old Times is Bootstrap; the rest have long since met their terms. Will supposes he should let him go as well, but a part of him is not quite ready for that yet.

Jack comes to sit upright and digs his toes a little into the sand. “You up for some shenanigans?” he asks. It is meant to sound seductive, but Jack isn’t quite pulling it off tonight.

Will shakes his head. “Not really,” he says.

Jack chuckles. “For once, neither am I. How about that, then?”

Will weaves his fingers together behind his head. The sand feels cool and grainy and full of stories. “I wouldn’t mind just talking,” he says, and gives a smile that he is glad Jack cannot see in the dark. “All the time in the world, right?”

 

 

There are some things they don’t talk about. The Congo. Vietnam. The _Titanic._ Elizabeth.

Will is a little behind on the times, but Jack is more than happy to prattle on about television and processed food and the ever-shortening of women’s apparel. Of course Jack would be an Elvis fan. He stops the Americans and the Russians from nuking each other, escapes custody after being charged with public indecency at Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, gets Rosa Parks drunk. Avoids eating seafood, calamari especially. The ‘60s receive a whole category of their own, and Will actually has to draw his sword to finally get Jack to shut up.

“Don’t deny it, Will. You love my bumptious twaddle,” Jack says, grinning, because he is right.

Man goes to the moon, and Jack complains that science is sucking all the magic out of things. Will silently agrees. He’s taken over one of Davy Jones’ hotspots in the Bermuda Triangle and has upgraded the Dutchman so it resembles a small cruise ship. Most people assume it belongs to some exclusive rich guy, and for a while they don’t even notice the boats and the planes disappearing.

During the ‘70s Jack gets a reputation amongst the Bahama locals for being the only man able to escape the Triangle. Dead men do tell tales, it seems. He has a boat that he still calls a ship and strokes like a lover, because it’s nigh impossible to separate Jack from the sea for too long. He bickers with Will in a number of languages they have both picked up, and they call each other Captain only when they are annoyed with the other. But after all this time they find they cannot argue for very long, and the banter becomes a sort of roundabout, convoluted foreplay. Will supposes he is as bad as Jack, now.

The millennium happens, and Jack drinks enough to give himself liver failure. Twice. Will cannot come ashore but he gives his crew the night off and watches the fireworks from his deck with his father, thinking of a new age and the curve of the horizon. People talk about Y2K, the end of the world, and Will muses that he has been to World’s End and it’s not so bad.

As expected, everything keeps moving, keeps turning. And there is more paperwork than ever. Rather than paintings, Will’s cabin wall is decorated with permits—as if he needs _permission_ to do this and that. They are mostly for fun. A few are forged. He’s roughened his speech, has a better American accent than he would care to admit, is surprisingly good with technological appliances, and can threaten you in eight different languages, if you ask him right. He has also blossomed into a fantastic liar.

He tells himself that last bit is Jack’s fault, but that’s only half true.

 

 

Cell phones make the whole ten years thing slightly more bearable. Will has stopped wondering if it is physics or magic that T-Mobile allows him service twelve thousand feet underwater, but he figures he should at least be a little grateful to the Forces that Be.

Jack loses his cell phone every month or so, turns tax evasion into an art form, and gets a PhD in linguistics, just because he can. He’s learned to say “my” instead of “me,” “got it” or “roger” instead of “savvy,” and prefers “mate” over “dude”—but he will still call himself Captain to his dying day.

He also discovers drunk texting and emojis, to Will’s dismay.

“How do you make a living?” Will asks him in 2006, incredulous, as Jack accidentally sits on his phone with a resounding snap. It was his fourth this summer.

“Oh,” Jack replies, waving dismissively, “this and that. I can be a remarkably articulate salesman. Y’know, as long as I shower and stuff.”

“Do I even want to know?” Will asks, scrubbing the bridge of his nose.

 

 

Now when people hear the word “piracy” they think more of video uploads than they do of the high seas. Will one night decides to drink a giant glass of gin and tonic and watch every illegal movie off the internet he can find, because he is a pirate, dammit, and a Captain at that.

Which somehow turns into him watching LOLcats and a romcom at two in the morning, so he calls Jack to complain about it but Jack is laughing too hard to be of any help, the wanker. Will tells him as such.

“Oi, have you seen the dramatic chipmunk?” Jack snickers, letting the insults slide. “Reminds me a bit of you.”

“Yes I have, as a matter of fact,” snaps Will, “and it actually reminds me of _you.”_

There is a crunch on the other end. From the sounds of it, Jack is eating something brittle, likely chips or something salty. “So pirates have gone digital,” he muses, chewing. “D’you reckon they have a captain? Scourge of the World Wide Web, an’ all that? What do you think internet pirates call themselves?”

“Arrested,” says Will.

Jack laughs again. “Good one, mate.”

 

 

“Luck isn’t always going to save you, you know that, right?”

“It’s gotten me this far, hasn’t it?” Jack says, smirking into the phone. “This time, believe it or not, I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“That will be the day,” says Will. He swipes his tablet shut, whose local news had made Will choke on his morning coffee while reading it. “Not exactly a capital offense in your book but _plagiarizing?_ Really, Jack?”

“Firstly,” Jack says, “it’s self-plagiarism. Secondly, you can’t actually plagiarize something you’ve already written. Thirdly, I like correcting history. It gives me a sense of honor, or something.”

Will snorts.

“Alright there mate?”

“Tickle in my throat,” says Will, just to humor Jack.

“Well don’t strain yourself on accounts of me,” Jack says. “Now I could just be sitting around creating memes like you do, or I could tell people what really happened to the _Whydah._ 2 ”

Will’s eye twitches, just a little. “I hardly think that’s something they need to know.”

“Imagine if they knew about Blackbeard. It’s the thought that counts. Just being a Good Samaritan, me. And what do I get for it?” Jack gives a wounded sniff. “An orange one-piece, and it ain’t a bathing suit.”

Will wonders if Jack can hear him grinding his teeth over the phone. “You really need another hobby,” he tells him, before hanging up.

 

 

Jack could make the Guinness Book of World Records with the number of times he’s been arrested, and a second one with how many times he’s escaped custody. He complains it is getting harder to disappear these days, with everybody knowing how to read and everything on computers and numbers attached to any name or word.

“I have a feeling they’re going to make machines that can, I dunno, scan your DNA or something. I wouldn’t put it past this lot.” Jack smiles a heavy smile, gold teeth glinting in the fluorescent lights. They are in a bar this time, as usual, and the stereo is weakly bleating out Taylor Swift in the background.

“Well,” Will answers, “they’ll certainly find something interesting.”

“What, you mean besides the flogging scars?” Jack taps his nose, winking. “Your partners must think you are one _kinky_ son of a bitch.” He takes a swig of his beer and burps. “I know mine do. Don’t ‘ave it in me to tell them otherwise.”

Will raises an eyebrow. It is an incredibly Jack-like expression. “I was thinking more along the lines of blood samples.”

Jack clinks his glass against Will’s. “Can’t argue with that, mate.”

He doesn’t spend all his time at sea anymore. Will asks him why, even when he knows the answer. He wants to hear Jack say it. Jack munches on a gluten-free biscuit that doesn’t seem to be agreeing with him and washes it down with beer before he answers.

“Watched a dozen of me crews die off,” he slurs to Will. His accent makes a cameo when he is especially drunk. Or when he just doesn’t care. “Not that I care, but sometimes I do.”

“You could always come work for me,” Will says.

Jack makes a face. “That has got to be the worst pickup line I have ever heard,” he grumbles.

 

 

These days the Flying Dutchman is less the Man-O-War Scourge of the Seven Seas and more of a…cleanup boat.

Will has his crew collect garbage from the ocean— _his_ ocean, which once held home to goddesses and monsters and fantastic beasts of Old and now sports mostly soda can rings. When the crew nowadays talks of a “monster” they mean human and when they talk of something “shiny” they mean an oil slick.

“There’s an article here says ocean acidity is rising,” his father reads, browsing pages on his MacBook. He shakes his head. “The Sea Gods would have a fit if they saw. Makes pissing in the ocean seem like a prayer.”

They are deep beneath the waves now, and from his window Will sees a sting ray with fishernet scars on its back swim by. Don’t ask him how electronics work down here, but they do, and the laptop’s glow is the only light under fifty tons of water.

“The Gods don’t care anymore,” says Will, sitting on the table with a piece of wood and a carving knife. These days he is all about finding things to keep himself busy that don’t involve anything he can plug in. “They have no place in the new world.”

His father looks up. “Do we?” he asks. Before Will can answer his father glances back down at the screen and curses. “Damn battery’s low again. Have you seen my charger, Will?”

There is a chatter and Jack the Monkey is dangling a white cord from the ceiling. Behind them, something impossibly large swims by with a faint, green glow. Watching it gives Will hope.

There might be storm above, but only he knows what lies on the ocean’s floor.

 

 

“Let’s sail to Byzantium,” Jack says, suddenly.

Will gives him an odd look. “What?”

“Not Turkey, mind you, but the other.” Jack lets a foot dangle over the dock and pauses to inspect something under his nails. “We’re getting a bit old for this, don’t you think?”

Jack’s verbal cryptograms have gotten easier to figure out after a few centuries, so Will is surprised to find he has no idea what Jack is saying. He wrinkles his nose and asks, “What in blazes are you on about?”

“Read some Yeats, mate,” Jack says as he breezes off, leaving Will standing on a pier in Blackpool with the wind whipping his hair across his face like a slap because Jack just made a literary reference that he didn’t get.

If that doesn’t foretell the end of the world, Will thinks, nothing does.

 

 

Jack joins the Dutchman on the eve of the Third Great War, when the air sizzles with nukes and fire stretches across all lands. Will holds out his hand to seal the deal, but Jack pulls it back.

“I’m not actually working for you, you know that,” Jack says, sniffing.

Will rolls his eyes. “So you’re just coming for the sex, is that it?”

“Please,” snorts Jack. “We’ve been fuckbuddies for two hundred years, Will. Now I don’t know about you, but I like to think I’ve risen above mere carnal pleasures in that time.”

Will leans in close. “And I like to think I know you pretty damn well by now,” he whispers. “’Ulterior motive’ is practically your middle name.”

“Yeah, well,” Jack flounders for a bit. Finally he sighs and removes his hat. “Immortality’s a pompous, bilge-sucking bitch, alright? I thought it would be fun, to see the end of the world. Hellfire an’ all that.”

Something explodes in the distance with a belch. Will looks at Jack and understands.

“Now you, you can always relinquish your captainship to some poor sap and be done with it,” Jack says, poking Will on the arm. “Me? I’m here till judgement day unless I somehow locate a very specific rock in a very specific tree in the Amazon that I’ve bloody well forgotten how to find, or until I can negotiate with a certain Tapirapé who will generously remind me of this fact. 3”

“In case you’ve lost count, I have another two years before I can set foot on land,” says Will, frowning.

Jack gives him an amused look. “All this time and you still play by the rules, Captain Turner? Don’t tell me, you’re a, whatsit, you’re a Scorpio. You look like a Scorpio. You need to think like an Aquarius, mate. Or maybe that’s a Leo. I always forget which one I am.4 ” He waggles a finger. “But stars aside, I thought you cleverer than this.”

“Insulting me isn’t going to win my heart,” Will says, dryly.

“Nope,” agrees Jack. “That is in fact why I have these little puppies.” He holds up what appears to be rubber buckets with straps. “Water boots.”

Will groans. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“I never kid,” Jack protests, somber. “It gets things thrown at me.”

Will grabs one of the boots and makes to pummel Jack with it, but Jack’s already halfway down the starboard side of the boat, running that flailing run of his and laughing between hollered lyrics from _Mister Stormalong._ 5 And Will lets it slide because he recognizes Jack’s real laugh, the one he only laughs when he is around Will and there is no one to see. It is a sound of freedom and the wind.

 

 

For a while, Jack stays. He dresses like he is from the Wild West, which in a way he is. His hair is short and the excessive jewelry is gone, but he is still all muscle and bone and actually quite fair under the tan. Will knows all of his scars, even the ones Jack does not let the ladies see when his bedsheets are otherwise occupied.

Over the centuries Will has decorated himself with a piercing here, a tattoo there, and a bandanna to barely curb an explosion of curls. There is a great big mirror in his quarters. After they’ve had their fun, and Jack is the first to doze (always), Will looks at the two of them in that mirror and sometimes wonders who the pirate is.

One morning he takes Jack’s water boots out to the lifeboats and fills them up. For experiment’s sake. You cannot counter centuries-old magic with synthetic rubber.

But apparently, Jack thinks he can. And when Jack thinks something is possible, it has a mysterious way of being so. Will brings the boat back up on deck and sits at the wheel, regarding his reflection in the bootwater. Years ago he would have rejoiced at a loophole, a chance to visit land. Now, there is no reason to.

 _“The ship it was their coffin, And their grave it was the sea…”_ he quietly sings to himself.

 _“…A sailing down all on The coasts of High Barbary,”_ Jack finishes from behind him, gaze on the rising sun ahead. “That’s an old one. I’m surprised you know it. 6”

“My father,” says Will.

“Ah. Truth be told, I always thought immortality meant freedom,” Jack says. He folds his arms on the rail and rests his head on top of them with a fond expression. “Doing whatever the hell I wanted, when I wanted. Sounded like a thalassophile’s dream, an’ I was curious.” He leans back and stretches his arms above his head. “Ever heard that saying the truth shall set you free, Will?”

“Honesty is a tad hard when you don’t age,” Will jokes, yet he’s never felt farther from laughing. It is a sore spot for both of them.

Jack nods. “Now if memory serves me right, I have six hundred and twenty-three aliases, I lie most of the time, and I’m forced to move every year or so. Have to confess I’ve felt a bit caged, me.”

Will says nothing. Jack comes around, looks down at the boot in Will’s hand, and smiles. “Did you know—at least to the Greeks, anyway—that sparrows are thought to be psychopomps?” he asks. “Kind of like you, Will. They guide the dead to the afterlife.”

“You’re not dead,” says Will.

“Technically…nooo,” Jack admits, slowly, “but to tell you the truth, mate? I died years ago.” There is something so bleak and matter-of-fact about the way Jack says it that Will suddenly feels cold. Like there’s seawater down his back.

He swallows, asks, “So why are you still around?” though he knows the answer anyway. He’s read Yeats.

“Why do you think?” Jack says, looking at Will. Will feels something twinge in his chest where his heart used to be because Jack is supposed to be witty and idiotic and _not_ heartbreaking, damn it all.

He holds up the boot. Water sloshes in it, spilling over onto his hand. He never planned to stay this long anyway. “South America, you say?”

“Aye,” says Jack. “A country for old men. So what’ll it be, Captain? Will we stick around ‘till World’s End, or shall we find ourselves a more favorable alternative? Come Will, I know you’ve missed this. It’s written all over your sad puppy-face.”

“Only as much as you have,” Will says.

Jack holds out his hand. “So what do you say? One last adventure, you an’ me.”

Will looks to the horizon and sees the sun has risen over a new day. He begins to smile.

“Hoist the colors,” he says, softly.

 

 

You can sometimes see the Dutchman, where the sky meets the earth at sunset, if you squint into the offing. Proving the weather is clear and the clouds are behaving themselves.

If you are lucky, you may even see another ship alongside it, with sails as black as night and billowing in the breeze even if there is no wind about. You feel the urge to take a picture, draw it, commit it to memory before it vanishes because no one will believe you if you tell them. You may not even believe what you see yourself, so you blink or turn away.

When you look back again you see that it was only a trick of the light, and there is nothing there at all. Only the horizon.

 

_End._

 

* * *

 

 Footnotes:

1 Jack Ketch was an infamous seventeenth-century executioner. His name became popular in English sayings for referring to death, execution, and the devil. Supposed pirate slang dictated that "to dance with Jack Ketch" meant to hang.

2 The _Whydah_ was the first official pirate shipwreck to be found. A slave and cargo ship, the _Whydah_ was captured by pirates and was capsized in 1717. Jack Sparrow apparently knows otherwise.

3 One group of indigenous Brazilian tribes, deep within the Amazon, is called the Tapirapé. They were mostly isolated until the early 20th century, save the select few who knew how to find them.

4 He's actually a Gemini.

5 Mister Stormalong was a folk figure in nautical lore—a giant, who had an ongoing rivalry with the Kraken and who had a ship so tall its sails could touch the moon.

6 _The Coasts of High Barbary,_ usually sung as a ballad or a sea shanty. Revamped in the late 18th century when Barbary pirates were attacking American ships, the song tells of the pirates being defeated and sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

 

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of people have pointed out the underlying theme in _Pirates of the Caribbean_ is Jack trying to find immortality. Technically he does, but gives it up on three separate occasions. This inspired me to think, what if Jack found it proper, and he and Will had shenanigans throughout history?
> 
> So I revisited the _Pirates_ movies on a sick day, and this sort of happened. I can't believe I've been in this fandom twelve years and have never written for it before. Will was the hardest for me to write, since when you have a quirky character and a straight man the quirky character is always going to write him/herself and you're left trying to figure out what to do with the straight man. But I think I made him work alright.
> 
> The title is from a poem by William Butler Yeats called _Sailing to Byzantium,_ which in short tells the story of a man, suffering from old age, who seeks to leave his physical body and exist in spiritual paradise for all eternity.


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